What is the one image most identified with London? If you’ve lived here long enough chances are it’s neither Big Ben nor Buckingham Palace. You might say something very cool like Broadway Market, or something very glam like Harrods. But you’d be lying and/or cringe and/or naff, so spare yourself.
The correct answer is the cherry blossom: neutral, wholesome, charming, and eye roll-proof. And so I find it lamentable how little the trees seem to have bloomed this year — flourishing out of hibernation prematurely due to an unseasonably warm February and shedding their leaves almost as promptly.
The situation is similar in Japan, original home of the Sakura, where the tree in bloom signals the start of spring as well as the new academic and financial years — and where global warming has wreaked havoc on the timing of blossom season for years.
Sakuras were brought here from Japan in the early 20th century by Collingwood Ingram, determined to preserve their diversity at a time when varieties were disappearing amid industrialisation.
The range on show on London’s streets today are a testament to one of our early intercontinental conservation efforts. More than this, they tell the story of our modern city.
On the New Kent Road, a Sakura has grown intertwined by an African lilac by Driscoll House, which in 1913 became one of the city’s first women-only hostels
Near Borough Market in Dickens Square one of the capital’s richest collection of cherry blossoms bedecks one of south London’s largest mosques. And a stone’s throw away on the New Kent Road, a Sakura has grown intertwined by an African lilac by Driscoll House, which in 1913 became one of the city’s first women-only hostels.
Over in west London, the blossoms near the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens are a favourite spot for Japanese expatriates, keeping up the age-old custom of Hanami (enjoying the transient beauty of flowers).
These and other facts are captured in a delightful book by Annegret Schopp-O’Dwyer, a trained psychotherapist who became entranced by her local blossoms during lockdown. The esoteric anecdotes in London’s Cherry Blossom, published in 2021, befit a woman who has also translated John Cleese’s Families And How to Survive Them into German.
Cherry blossoms are a part of London’s furniture. And their beauty is waning. Of all the effects climate change has on our city — including a higher risk of flooding and of unbearable heatwaves — I find this the saddest.
